Nostalgia Cà Phê

Introducing Nostalgia Cà Phê

A NEW COLLECTION OF essays, short fiction, zines, and line drawings in pen by Dipika Kohli. Nostalgia is set to release exclusively at this page on 1 September 2017. Take advantage of a few extras you’ll get if you pre-order.

About Nostalgia Cà Phê

In Nostalgia Cà Phê, Kohli gives you a sequence of short pieces set in both Copenhagen and Hanoi that, taken together, illustrate in collected instances just how very flighty, romantic, and illogical a poet’s heart can be. But then, it’s way more than that. It’s about movement, about the interstitial spaces between people and places, and about how we change when we go somewhere new. It’s about the discoveries and the journeys, but also, it’s about the feelings of untetheredness and loose, unfettered lack of rootedness that one might find if one were to describe him or herself as, say, an eternally drifting nomad. Could be metaphorical: slipping in and out of varying social circles, whenever one gets bored. Still, there is solace in the nurturing of communities, of growing into and within a space that might not have seemed like home, at first, but slowly, with the re-evaluation of what the idea of ‘fromness’ really means, becomes a way of life, rather than a place. It’s a story of what we leave behind when we move forward, of who might wonder, and where we choose to go when we pick a direction, with intention towards staying open; with a push towards the edge and then, past it; with the flighty, but not unwelcome, feeling that next is where the good stuff is. That we must let a drift take us, as and how it may.

About the author

Dipika KohliAuthor Dipika Kohli’s past books (The Elopement, The Dive, Kanishka) are all about chance encounters. The thread that ties all of Kismuth’s stories together is the idea that you just don’t know what’s going to happen next. ‘It’s why we’re called Kismuth, the Hindi word for ‘destiny.’ Yeah, it’s Kismuth that’s how my grandmother used to pronounce it. The word ‘kismet’, which is popular in those yoga places, is just an Anglicized version of the word and misses something. A lot, actually. Like the point of letting things come to be, instead of ascribing some philosophical tag to them, and intellectualizing. Does it makes sense? What. I’m doing that now. Let me stop.’

The big-picture overarching theme of Kismuth Books is to write stories honestly and directly from the heart, while celebrating life, even when the edges are a little unkempt and the storylines get a bit messy. Following one’s heart isn’t so much about going with what feels good on the spot, as it is about honing a sense of noticing what corners are ahead, and a curiosity to investigate just what might be around them. Not always, of course. But sometimes. And in Viet Nam and also Copenhagen, the author of this short collection of poetry and line drawings will take you to where the interesting things happened, one intriguing conversation at a time. This follows on the poetry collection, a study for Nostalgia: Book of Songs (Kismuth // 2015). See examples of Dipika’s visual aesthetic style at instagram.com/dipikakohli.

Larger story

ART OF NOT KNOWING. Nostalgia Cà Phê is part of a larger set of works, a collection called the ‘Art of Not Knowing,’ set to publish Fall 2018. That set will be a fuller sequence of essays from other parts of Asia, too,, first-person narratives, poems, drawings, and even sound files that give you a picture of what it was like from 2014-2016 while the author was on the road in South and Southeast Asia before finally settling into a routine in a place she never imagined she would live. ‘Art of Not Knowing’ is a work in progress, being shared throughout its production with patrons who are pre-ordering the books that will be part of that collection. Small releases like Nostalgia Cà Phê between now and its release in Fall 2018 will be shared as they are completed.

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Books

The Book of Songs (2015)Breakfast in Cambodia (2016)Kanishka (2015)The Elopement (2012)The Dive (2012)

ABOUT

KISMUTH BOOKS began publishing in 2012 with the unexpectedly well-received launch of an eBook, The Elopement. Since then, the Kismuth series on love, life, loss and chance continued with The Dive and Kanishka. Changing course, in 2016, Kismuth published an unsual creative nonfiction piece, Breakfast in Cambodia, after a three-year sojourn in Asia that landed the authors in Phnom Penh. Short eBooks like The Book of Songs (poetry and collage) and Bangkok came into play as the small team at Kismuth found solace in comic relief. Meantime, zines and chapbooks have been published in short-runs, usually in conjunction with art installations designed by Design Kompany. Kismuth became part of DK on 1 January 2017.